Bessie

Cornelia Powers is a writer who is working on a book about the golfer Bessie Anthony, her great-great-grandmother.

As the Woodstone mansion’s resident Prohibition-era jazz singer, Pinnock drew inspiration from the likes of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith for the overt confidence of her brassy, flamboyant character.

However, the free spiritedness of her music — an uncommon blend of old-time bluegrass, country, ragtime, folk and jazz, anchored by her powerhouse vocals that by turns recall Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Bessie Smith — remains largely the same.

Within the world of aviation, he was hailed as a trailblazer along with the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II and people such as Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman known to earn a pilot’s license.

She and her mother, Bessie Barber, moved to Atlanta to “make a better living” for themselves.